


To Boldly Go

by Rebecca



Category: Milky Way (Anthropomorphic)
Genre: Exploration, Gen, Space Flight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-14
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-21 03:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rebecca/pseuds/Rebecca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Saturn's distinctive rings look solid from the distance and cast a beautiful, striped shadow on the pale yellow cloud cover beneath.</em>
</p>
<p>The journey of the Voyager 2 spacecraft.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Boldly Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cake/gifts).



> Thanks to primeideal for the beta! ♥

> There is nothing so far removed from us to be beyond our reach, or so far hidden that we cannot discover it. —René Descartes

Her first memories go back to the moment they bolt the golden record to her hull. She doesn't understand its significance at first; after all, it is just a metal plate which doesn't add to her functionality. She has learned since what the golden record contains: a collection of sounds and images of her creators and the world they live in, documenting not only their diverse culture, but also their eternal hope and imagination that sometime, somewhere, there might be someone who will decipher and read the message. But in that first moment, she just senses the solemnity of her creators, and it is enough to make her feel important.

The next big moment in her life is when they launch her into space and she finally becomes alive. She unfolds her antennas and instrument booms, and she hears her creators' commands clearly; they are cheerful and exhilarated and urge her to look around. So she does. Earth is a huge blue sphere filling her view, and next to it she can see the half-moon rising. It's their home, and although she hasn't spent much time there, it feels like her home too. She waves a silent goodbye.

When she turns around, the darkness surprises her, but then she sees the millions and millions of twinkling stars in the distance, and suddenly she understands her creators' fascination for the unknown that lies out there. It's beautiful, and now it's her task to explore a tiny bit of it. She wiggles in anticipation and follows her twin sister into the outer solar system.

* * *

Although she has heard much about Mars, she only sees it from afar. Many of her brothers and sisters have visited the red planet, she knows, but her destiny lies elsewhere. Thus, she flies past unnoticed and soon enters the asteroid belt. The quiet chatter that has accompanied her so far gets urgent all of a sudden; she realises that her creators are anxious lest she get hit by an asteroid. With their help, however, she stays clear of any potential danger. She would have liked to have a closer look at some of the curiously shaped rocks, eager to collect data as is her mission, but the asteroids stay tiny dots in the distance, almost indistinguishable from the stars. Among those dots is her twin sister, gaining on her and overtaking her, but soon she loses sight of her.

The first setback leaves her temporarily deaf. She can't hear her creators anymore, and it terrifies her. Space is a lonely and cold place, she realises all of a sudden, and she isn't made for being alone. She needs guidance to find her way, a vision to carry on, curiosity to look around her, none of which she can provide on her own.

After a while that seems endless, her backup receiver finally comes online. She's never felt more relieved when she can make out the restless voices from Earth once more—how lovely a sound it is!

* * *

Finally she comes close enough to Jupiter for her mission to start properly. She takes the first pictures and sends them home, tries her various scientific instruments for the first time, and she can feel her creators' excitement, leaving her thrilled. She passes Jupiter's moons first: Callisto, white-flecked and covered in craters; Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system; Europa, white and red and sprinkled with a fascinating criss-cross pattern; Amalthea, reddish and irregularly shaped and tiny compared to the other moons.

Then there's Jupiter, a giant among planets, a second sun almost; growing bigger and bigger as she approaches until the reddish sphere almost fills her entire field of vision. Jupiter's clouds form beautiful white and red swirls and bands, moving constantly, forever producing new patterns. Only one marking stays almost the same; they call it the Great Red Spot. They have a name for everything, she has found, and she adores them for it. The spot turns out to be a complex rotating storm, and gladly, she sends image sequences of the amazing sight home, still wishing there could be a more direct way to let her creators know what she experiences. If only they could be here with her!

Most interesting of all is, however, to compare what her creators expect her to find to what she actually sees. There's so much they have deduced from afar by building technical instruments, collecting data, developing models, often puzzling over problems for centuries with admirable persistence. Still, there are phenomena out here that surprise them, theories they got wrong or data they have missed—like the rings around Jupiter her sister and she discover. To help them like this makes her feel especially proud.

Turning away from Jupiter, she passes Io, the green and yellow moon with the thin atmosphere and young surface. In a series of lucky coincidences, she witnesses several volcanic eruptions, proving that there is geological activity outside of Earth. It seems a small observation compared to others she has made, but her creators are so full of ecstatic energy it almost overwhelms her. Puzzled, she comes to the conclusion that they are fascinated even more by what is similar to their well-known home than by what is completely different.

* * *

The elation of the success of the Jupiter flyby still hasn't quite worn off when she reaches Saturn. Its distinctive rings look solid from the distance and cast a beautiful, striped shadow on the pale yellow cloud cover beneath. She is already very close to Saturn's atmosphere before she meets the first two of Saturn's moons, Dione and the tiny, elongated Calypso whose reflective surface makes it seem bigger than it actually is. Thousands of kilometres later, she can see that the system of rings and shepherd satellites is more intricate than assumed, with unknown gaps and smaller ringlets, and she gets the idea that she'd find even more details if she were allowed closer. It's almost like looking at a fractal, someone whispers over the radio connection.

Sadly, she can't take as many pictures as planned because her camera locks up and refuses to be moved. Since she has lots of other instruments to make up for it, she isn't too worried at first, but then she overhears that her future mission is in jeopardy. What that means she doesn't know, after all, she can't just turn around and go back, and it leaves her uneasy. Is this fear, she wonders?

With her radio link she probes Saturn's atmosphere, collecting temperature and density information, when finally the camera starts working again. She's not quite sure how her creators could have fixed it from so far away, but she's thankful nonetheless and lets the relieved cheers back on Earth propel her forward. Some of Saturn's remaining moons fly by quickly: Rhea, Tethys, Enceladus, and more; too many to fast to remember them all. It's almost like its own small solar system.

* * *

The flight to Uranus is her longest trip until then. The sun is less bright out here than it used to be, and Earth, while still visible, is nothing but a tiny dot if she doesn't focus on it, which they don't allow. They keep contact at a minimum, too, in order to save energy. On one of the rare occasions they give orders to correct her course, one of her creators once asks her if she is bored alone in the emptiness. She's never thought of boredom; after all, there are billions of stars wherever she turns, the space is full of particles, there's a constant background noise of cosmic radiation, and above all she hears the various distinctive pulses of quasars and pulsars. How could she ever get bored?

She is the first spacecraft to ever approach Uranus; her twin sister, who has been ahead of her so far, charting the territory, is heading directly for interstellar space now. She's on her own. As she gets closer to the blue planet, she can feel the excitement of her creators grow.

She reaches the moon Miranda first, and although it seems non-descript at first, the patchworked, broken surface she sees leaves her creators puzzled. They are quick to form new theories, however, one of them suggesting that Miranda is a reaggregation of shattered pieces from when the earlier Miranda had been destroyed by a heavy impact. She enjoys listening to their creative explanations while she flies on, loves being part of their thought processes that are so foreign to her. Discovering a dozen new moons along the way becomes almost negligible in comparison.

The rings are next; they are similar to Saturn's but yet subtly different; younger. Then the pale blue sphere of Uranus fills the view of her cameras, its cloud tops so perfectly unmarred by any markings that they are almost disappointing to look at. Still, Uranus has its surprises; the unique axial tilt of almost 90 degrees is known to her creators, but its dazzling effect on the planet's magnetosphere leaves them thrilled. It trails after Uranus like a giant corkscrew, she is informed, and although she can't picture a corkscrew, she likes how the word sounds.

* * *

Neptune is the last planet she visits. It's blue like Uranus, but darker, and its atmosphere with the dark and white bands is a faint mirror of Jupiter's in its turbulence. She even discovers a big dark spot, Neptune's own blue version of the Great Red Spot. She finds it interesting how patterns repeat. What's out there, she wonders, another Earth, maybe even other intelligent life forms shooting their own spacecraft into the depth of the universe?

She passes Neptune at a much closer distance than any other body since she left Earth. As she travels by, she feels the strong pull of the planet's gravity before she heads towards Triton, Neptune's largest moon. It's going to be her last planned encounter and probably the last solid body she will ever meet, and she's curious about her future, but at the same time apprehensive. As if to salute her and give her one last opportunity to do her creators proud, Triton shows her its beautiful, hitherto unknown geysers and polar caps, so reminiscent of Earth that she resolves to never forget the sight.

* * *

She has been on an interstellar mission for a while now, headed towards the unknown. Her visual camera isn't of much use out here where distances are enormous, but before they deactivate it, her creators want her to take one last picture. She turns around, looks back at the tiny sun, sees the pale blue dot she came from, even Venus farther in the distance, a planet she's never encountered before. She can make out Saturn and Jupiter as well, and it feels like an eternity already since she's been there, still young and inexperienced and full of energy. Easier to see are Uranus and Neptune, blue and solid against the darkness. She's the first to take a picture of the planets from outside Neptune's ecliptic, and she registers the awed silence over the static in the radio connection when the pictures finally reach Earth more than five hours later.

She shuts off the camera and turns her attention back towards the vastness in front of her. Her sister and she are the first man-made objects to leave the solar system and be able to report back, and the cheers her creators send after her, even though they're muted now with the distance, urge her on. They don't even know when exactly the influence of the Sun and the solar winds will end, or what data to expect from her, so she is happy to observe for them.

And after that? Who knows. One thing she is sure of, however: that she will never get tired of her creators' excitement and their creative ways to view the world around them, and by extension, around her. For all her ability to survey and measure, to record and monitor, it's their imagination that transforms data into meaning. And maybe one day, she will encounter someone equally curious who recognises her for what she is and who deciphers her golden record. She knows better now what it contains, but she hopes it will fall into the hands of those who can appreciate it even more than she ever could.


End file.
